Ever hear religious ’scientists’ talk about evolution? They might say something to the effect of criticizing evolution and/or even dismissing it completely. (Kent Hovind anybody?)

It’s nigh time to set the record straight on this topic. Religious people like to debate evolution but I’m sorry folks (Christians, etc.) this is not the case at all. To debate evolution or deny it’s existence is comparable to denying gravity or the speed of light. Evolution is more than just some scientific theory, comparable to theism in it’s validity.

Evolution is scientific fact, not a debate, that is self-evident in everything we observe in biological nature. For example: bacteria exposed to antibiotics but not entirely killed will become resistant to that drug. Tracing back the roots of evolution and the similarities between species is not some vague hypothesis that only atheists spout to debunk god. It’s a complex and easy to observe fact and a lot of Christians seem to have a misunderstanding of evolution.

I recently heard a clip from the movie “Expelled” where Ben Stein says something to the effect of “Well, Darwin’s theory doesn’t explain where life came from.” This shows what a basic misconception of evolution that people have. Christians tend to think of it as an alternative to the bible and our ‘creation’ but it really isn’t. It’s not even supposed to.

Evolution teaches how simple organism evolve into more complex organisms. How they adapt to their environments and where our ancestors came from. It doesn’t explain how life began per se and doesn’t claim to.

Scientists have categorized thousands of animals and their origins and how they all relate to each other in a biological classification that’s organized into eight taxonomic ranks: Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species. Species being the one we are more familiar with on a day to day basis.

I’d recommend that anyone criticizing evolution to take a deeper look into it and study its many facets. There’s a lot more to it than just ‘random mutation’ though that is a part of it. It’s a very sound and observable function of biology and any religious person that tries to say otherwise has seriously ignored the tremendous amount of scientific data pertaining to it.

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If you have ever debated a religious person you will find a few key arguments that they will turn to in order to try and prove their side. One of these key issues are morals and where they come from.

Christians will argue that morals stem from god otherwise “Why would we do good things or help one another?”. They say that all good things come from a god and that all evil acts arise from the devil.

If you really want to study morals and get into the “meat and potatoes” of it’s philosophy I recommend reading about moral relativism, moral absolutism and moral universalism. However, the purpose of this post isn’t to get down and dirty with the finer aspects of philosophical debate but to try and provide a more basic and practical alternative theory.

We generally live our lives not truly understanding why we do things. Why is it that women with bigger hips are generally found more attractive than smaller hipped women? Why are we attracted to each other? Where does the desire to do good come from? For each of these there is at least some sort of scientific theory which tries to explain them and usually does a pretty god job. Some better than others as it is hard to differentiate between upbringing and genetics (currently at least). One good example is women with bigger hips: Men might find them more attractive because of a larger pelvis bone, which can make birth easier. These are things we probably aren’t consciously aware of, but are there instinctively for an evolutionary reason.

But we just don’t really think about it too deeply (at least some of us). All of these are great questions and some can be argued extensively by philosophers and scientists. I personally subscribe to a more evolutionary explanation. In that, we as a race have come together like no other species before us. We have built great civilizations, come to understand our universe better than any other animal and have mastered our environment to such a degree that was unheard of before our reign on this planet.

I believe that evolution and morality go hand in hand. Because of humans working together and helping out others near them in a community, we were able to cooperate to a much higher degree, enabling us to advance both intellectually and technologically. This sort of cooperation led to tribes and other such small communities and kept expanding until we come to what we have today.

I also think other things come into play when it comes to explaining morality; such as genes, society, upbringing, taboos and the like. The main point I am trying to make is that there are alternatives to explaining morality other than resorting to a deity which controls our every action. And that if you have any self respect you should at least try to do some research before falling back on “god explains all”.

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I wanted to post a link about a favorite video of mine. It’s an unmoderated 2 hour discussion between Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett.

I think it’s a great conversation and they cover everything from atheism to philosophy to science and much more. I definitely recommend this video to anyone who is interested in some of the more well known atheists of our time. This is a 2 hour video but it’s definitely worth it. Enjoy.

The Four Horsemen – Hour 1
The Four Horsemen – Hour 2

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Today’s article will be a fairly common topic and I felt that I should more clearly state my position on religious references in our society. You’ll hear a lot of atheists that seem to want to take out any reference to god found in anything related to government. Some examples would be our currency saying “In God We Trust”, or the famous “One nation under god” in our pledge of allegiance.

At first, I was against things like this. I thought “Hey, if it’s always been there just quit complaining and leave it.” It wasn’t until later that I found out that it wasn’t always like this. “One nation under god” was added to our pledge of allegiance in 1954. It was pushed by The Knights of Columbus (a catholic fraternal group from New York) several times and failed until President Eiesnhower passed the bill saying:

“These words will remind Americans that despite our great physical strength we must remain humble. They will help us to keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and moral principles which alone give dignity to man, and upon which our way of life is founded.”

When I hear a Christian argue that you should not change our country or the principles it was founded upon religion I really want to laugh because that is exactly what happened to our pledge of allegiance. It made no mention of a deity until a group tried over and over again to change it. (A less obvious example would be “In God We Trust” which was added during the civil war”)

Our country was built upon separation of church and state. The founding fathers were secularists and that is something, we today, need to remind ourselves of.

I know there are probably hundreds of examples of religious references in our society. For example: the ten commandments that were removed from a courthouse. This one I had to think about for awhile but came to the conclusion that the decision to remove them was the right one. Though in themselves the ten commandments aren’t necessarily wrong or conflicted with morals we have today; they still have no reason to be advertised at a government building. All of our laws should be based upon the constitution, not an ancient book written in a different country.

If you feel differently please post a comment and get a discussion going. On a side note, I think I will figure out how to add forums to this site in order to have an easier way of debating.

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